Is it time for a nap yet?

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

Gordon Parks captured the Jim Crow South with a quiet, devastating clarity—using his camera as both witness and weapon. Through intimate portraits and everyday scenes, he exposed the cruelty of segregation not with sensationalism but with humanity, dignity, and truth. Parks showed Black life in the South as it was lived: tender, resilient, disciplined, and determined, even under oppressive laws. His photographs didn’t just document injustice—they challenged America to see what it preferred to ignore.

This week - France only just officially removed the Code Noir from it’s constitution. Please swipe to read what some of the laws of Code Noir - a book of laws designed to govern enslaved people in the Caribbean.

This is what our family members endured. And this is a book of laws even after over 170 yrs since slavery was abolished - they never bothered to remove officially.

Let that sink in for a second.

To contribute to the critically endangered pygmy raccoon fund, you can donate:

On the website

On Venmo

THIS!!!

Swinging in like heyyy!I-wrote-a-holiday-fic-8-months-ago-and-I'm only-getting-round-to-publishing-it-now.

Last song: I honestly can't remember what I listened to most recently, but Genesis Owusu's "Death Cult Zombie" is currently stuck in my head and has been most of the day.

Last movie: The Backrooms. I had...thoughts.

Last book: The Witches' Marriage, because my kid is reading a crap ton of mlm, and I want to make sure she knows wlw stories also exist, so I'm reading far outside my usual genres to find her age-appropriate reading material that remembers women exist.

Last series: Drag Race Down Under Season 1

Last video game: Amanda the Adventurer 3

Last thing you ate: popcorn with M&Ms